"Polly will be a young lady by the time you are a man," answered his mother, who did not take Dicky's assumption of manliness seriously. "Oh, pshaw!" remarked Dicky, with a blush. II. In those days, when England was at war with France and half of Europe, promotion was sometimes rapid; and when Dicky had not got very far in his twenties he had been gazetted three times, and actually commanded a little eighteen-gun brig that carried as much manliness and courage as anything afloat. Dicky walked the deck of his little vessel, the Hornet, as proudly as Captain Sarsfield walked his splendid quarter-deck on his new line-of-battle ship--the Indomptable, finer even than the old Xantippe. And Dicky had developed into a model of sailor-and-officer-like neatness, and kept his ship as clean as a lady's boudoir. And one bright day the Hornet came sailing into Portsmouth Harbor, her sails and rigging roughly patched where the shot had torn through, with holes covered with bright new planking in her black sides, with four of her guns shattered at their muzzles, but bravely towing a French sloop of war almost twice as big as the little Hornet. The Frenchman, too, could barely keep afloat, but he had ten good guns that Dicky had brought home in place of the four he had lost. And Dicky, seeing the great, big, splendid Indomptable anchored in the harbor, stood boldly in and dropped his anchor just astern of her. Dicky knew well enough who commanded the Indomptable. Oh, what shouting and hurrahing there was when the people in the ships and those on shore made out the little Hornet! And what dipping of flags and waving of caps and cheering when the little vessel had come to anchor! And then, when Dicky, in a very small and shabby gig, with only four men at the oars, and some of them with their heads or their legs bound up, was rowed to the admiral's ship, there was more cheering and shouting, which made Dicky's heart swell. That very afternoon, by the time Dicky had got back on board the Hornet, a gig very unlike the Hornet's gig put off from the big Indomptable, and presently Captain Sarsfield clambered up the side, and Dicky, looking very red and pleased, holding his cap in his hand very much as he had done when Captain Sarsfield sent for him to scold him about his untidiness and general naughtiness, received the captain at the gangway. "Let me congratulate you," said Captain Sarsfield, shaking his hand warmly. "What a trouncing you gave the Frenchman to be sure! How you managed to keep afloat I can't see." "We are badly knocked to pieces," answered Dicky, "and on that account I hope you will excuse the appearance of things. The ship isn't as clean as I'd like her to be."